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She wore the deep green that always looked so beautiful on her. Her dark hair was braided with flowers and ribbons, most likely taking an hour to create. She had two spell spheres orbiting her. One cooled the air about her. The other sphere triggered favorite scent memories in those around her. The spheres always had made him leery. He knew that it was impossible for the spheres to collide with anything, but he always flinched when they got too near his head. Nor did it help that the one always made Jewel Tear smell like his blade mother, Otter Dance.

Around them the
sekasha
acknowledged each other's presence and waged their still and silent dominance battle. Not that it was much of a contest—Jewel had only been able to recruit a vanity hand of recent doubles. Against his First Hand, they were just babies.

"Wolf Who Rules Wind." Jewel Tear smiled warmly at him, and bowed lower than necessary, almost spilling her breasts out of her bodice.

"Jewel Tear on Stone." He bowed to her, wondering what her flagrant display meant. Was this strictly a personal invitation, however improper, or was the Stone Clan making use of her?

She stepped forward, rising up on her toes as if she meant to kiss him. He stopped her with a look. The spell spheres orbited them as she stood frozen in place.

"Wolf," she whimpered.

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"You are not my
sekasha
, nor are you my
domi
."

"I should be!" She jerked her chin up and glared at him. "You asked me! I told you that I needed time to consider it. I finally make my decision, pack my household to join you here in the Westernlands, and I get your letter saying that you were taking a human—a human—as your
domi
."

"I gave you a hundred years. When I was at court last, thirty years ago, we did not even speak to one another."

"I—I was busy, as were you. And a letter? You could not come and tell me yourself?"

"There was no time." He wondered what she hoped to gain with this tactic. He would not break his vow to Tinker, no matter how guilty Jewel tried to make him feel. Because Jewel never responded, she had no legal recourse.

She reached out to neaten his sleeve. "We courted for years—that slow exquisite dance of passion. The boat rides on Mist Lake with the whiting of swans. The picnics in the autumn woods. The winter masquerades. We took the time that is proper, to learn each other, to know that we were right for each other. What do you know of this—this—female? How can you know anything?"

He knew even if he tried to explain how a lifetime of understanding could be distilled out of twenty-four hours, she would not believe him. The elves never did—with the exception of Little Horse. "I knew enough. This is not court, where you have eternity to decide, because nothing changes. I was willing to risk whatever may come because if I did not put out my hand, and take her then, she would have been lost to me forever."

"What of your commitment to me?"

Wolf controlled a flash of anger. "I waited. You did not answer. I moved on."

"I needed time to think!" she cried and then looked annoyed that she had raised her voice. "I thought you knew me well enough to understand my position. I do not have your resources as the son of the clan leader—a favored cousin to the queen. You would have been forgiven for taking a
domi
outside your clan. Both Wind and Fire want you merely because of the other clan's interest; Wind would never turn you out for the Fire to take in. I do not have your luxury. I had to consider long and hard my responsibilities to my household before committing to you. I couldn't risk not being able to support them if neither Wind nor Stone sponsored me."

"If you had come to me, told me your concerns, I could have done something to guarantee that you
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would always have Wind Clan sponsorship." Even as he said it, though, he knew that it was better that she hadn't. He had made a mistake in asking her to be his
domi
. When he brought her to the Westernlands, dismay had spread across her face when she realized they would spend the rest of their lives in the wilderness, far from court. It had opened his eyes; he had fooled himself about how well they suited each another. He'd been willing to honor that commitment a hundred years ago, even after that realization. Even as recently as thirty years ago, he might have still taken her as his
domi.
In the last two decades, though, he had considered himself released of his pledge.

Jewel tried to make it all seem his fault. "I was supposed to trust you to take care of me when you couldn't be bothered to explain anything to me? You would go off and leave me with no idea what you had planned, what you were doing, when you were going to come back."

"I trusted you to do what you needed to do. I thought you trusted me."

A look flashed across her face before being hidden away, but he knew her too well not to recognize it and could guess her thoughts. One thing you learned well at court was to trust no one. Not only did she not trust him, she thought him weak for expecting it.

But this left one question. "What made you finally decide?" he asked.

Her nostrils flared and she glanced away from him. "Things have not gone well for me. Some of my ventures failed, I had miscalculated the risks involved on one, and in trying to cover my losses, things—cascaded. I was forced to give up my holdings." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "My household was losing faith in me."

So coming to him was not an act of love but of desperation. It would also explain what she was doing here now—without holdings, she would lose her household and then her clan sponsorship. Jewel Tear was too proud and ambitious to live under someone else's rule. If she was that destitute, though, she wouldn't have the funds to set up a holding at Pittsburgh; it could only mean that the Stone Clan chose her and advanced her stake money.

Did the Stone Clan think that if something happened to Tinker, he would turn to Jewel Tear? How far were they willing to go to put their theory to the test? He knew Jewel well enough to know that she would let nothing stand in the way of her ambitions. That had been one of the things he loved about her.

Tinker wished the machine room didn't feel so much like a trap. Whoever designed the room had never considered that there would be anything as dangerous as the black willow between the back room and the front door. Being around the black willow made everyone nervous. There were no signs, however, of it reviving despite a full day of summer heat. Oilcan rotated the steel drums of metal filings, taking the ones saturated with magic to some place to drain, and replaced them with fresh drums. Tinker could see
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no overflow of magic. Still, the
sekasha
all kept their shields activated just to use up local ambient magic.

She had the old spell jackhammered out of place. She was now carefully prepping the site to lay down the new spell and cement it into place.

Stormsong settled beside her, her sheathed
ejae
across her knees, her shields a blue aura around her.

"Do you mind if we talk?"

"Isn't that what we're doing?"

Stormsong gave a slight laugh, and then continued with great seriousness. "It's not my place to advise you. It should be Pony, as your only beholden, or Wraith Arrow, who is Windwolf's First, but—"

Stormsong sighed and shook her head. "Wraith Arrow won't cross that line, and Pony—that boy has a serious case of hero worship for you."

"Pony?"

"You can do no wrong in his eyes. You know all, see all, understand all—which leaves you up the shit creek because you really don't and he won't tell you squat, because he thinks you already know."

"So you're going to tell me?"

"You'd rather walk around with your head up your ass and not know it?"

Tinker groaned. "What am I doing wrong
now
?"

"You need to choose four more
sekasha
, at minimum."

Tinker sighed. "Why? Things are working fine this way."

"No, they're not, and you're the only one that doesn't see that. For instance, Pony is just a baby to the rest of us."

"He's at least a hundred." She knew he was an adult, although just barely, like she had been as an eighteen-year-old human. Unfortunately, now she fell into a nebulous zone of being just barely adult for years and years.

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"He just left the doubles this year." Meaning last year, he could use two numbers to indicate his age.

"Only half of Windwolf's
sekasha
are in the triples—the rest are older."

"How old are you?" Tinker was fairly sure Stormsong was one of the younger
sekasha
. She was starting to be able to look at elves and see their age indicators. It was odd, to have her concept of Windwolf slowly change from "adult" to "her age" as her perception of all elves changed.

"I'm two hundred." Which made her Pony's age, because to the elves that hundred year difference barely counted.

"So we're all approximately the same age."

"You wish." Stormsong took out a pack of Juicy Fruit gum and offered her a stick. "Yeah, physically Pony and I are like human teenagers, but we've still had a hell of a lot longer than you to figure out people."

Tinker took the gum and let the taste explode in her mouth. "What's your point? Is Pony old or young?"

"That is my point." Stormsong took a piece for herself and put away the pack. "He's the youngest of the
sekasha
, but he's your First."

"Are you trying to confuse me?"

"Anything regarding you, Pony is in charge, but he's the youngest of the
sekasha
."

This was starting to make her head hurt. "Are you talking . . . seniority?"

"Seniority. Seniority." Stormsong took out a small dictionary, flipped through it, and read off the entry for
seniority
. "Precedence of position, especially precedence over others of the same rank by reason of a longer span of service."

"Oh that's not fair," Tinker complained. "You get a dictionary. I want one for Elvish."

"We don't have such things." Stormsong put away the dictionary. "They would be too useful."

Tinker had to put "Elvish dictionary" on her project list.

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"Yes," Stormsong continued. "Pony needs seniority over those he commands, which he doesn't have because none of us are yours. What's more, when the bullets start to fly, we need to know which way to jump. Pony doesn't need to think. But the rest of us—we have pledged our lives to Windwolf; it's him we should be thinking of—but we know that only Pony is watching over you."

"I told Windwolf I'd think about this."

"Humans have a wonderful saying:
assume
is making an ass out of 'u' and me. Windwolf assumes that Pony will guide you in your choice, and Pony assumes that you know all."

"So you're doing it."

"Hell, someone has to."

"If it's Pony's job, shouldn't I just tell him that I don't know shit?"

Stormsong gave her a look that Tinker recognized from years of being a child genius.

"Oh gods," Tinker cried. "Don't look at me that way!"

"What way?"

"The 'what a clever little thing' look. It horrifies me how long I'm going to have to put up with that now that I'm an elf."

Stormsong laughed, and then lapsed into Low Elvish, sounding properly contrite. "Forgiveness,
domi
."

"Oh, speak English."

"Yes," Stormsong said in English. "You should talk to Pony, since those you hold need to work well with him. Let me give you pointers he might not think of—he is still new at this. Blind leading the blind and all that shit."

"You're not going to take 'later' as an answer?"

"Kid, how splattered with shit do you need to get before you realize it's hitting the fan? We're fuck deep in oni, Wyverns, and Stone Clan. Now is not the time to be worrying about chain of command."

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Stormsong had a way of driving the point home with a sledgehammer. Tinker just wished she wasn't the one being hammered. "Fine, point away."

"What all
sekasha
want is seniority. To be First. Failing that—in the First Hand." Top five, she meant.

"Forever at the bottom is a bitch. Pony was wise to seize the chance to be your First once he saw what you were made of. You've proved yourself with keeping both Windwolf and Pony safe from the oni—that's what a good
domi
does—so all of us are willing to fill your Hand."

"But . . ." Tinker swore she could hear a "but" in there somehow.

"It would be best for all—" Stormsong paused and then added, "—in my opinion—that you don't choose from Windwolf's First Hand."

"Why not?"

"Most
domana
fill their First Hand with
sekasha
just breaking their doubles. The
domana
want the glory a Hand gives them, and the
sekasha
see it as a way to be in First Hand. We call it a vanity Hand.

The thing is that most
domana
can't attract a Second Hand because not only is the incentive of being First gone, the
sekasha
of the Second Hand have to be willing to serve under the First Hand. Likewise the Third Hand knows that they will be junior to the First Hand and the Second. Adding into this is the personality of the
domana
: does the positive of being beholden to that
domana
outweigh the negative of not having seniority? Many
domana
can only hold vanity Hands."